Catch Me: Kill Me

by Hallahan, William H. ;

  For a moment, Leary considered calling Powell. He dismissed the thought. The address was more than four blocks from the subway, and Leary walked it at a brisk pace, casting glances periodically behind.

  He found J. Simmonds’s name on the vestibule bell of the apartment building and rang it. When the buzzer unlocked the door, he took the elevator to the eighth floor and located the apartment. An old man stood in the doorway.

  “Good afternoon,” said Leary.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  The old man stood there in a dark blue sweater jacket. He might have been eighty-five, thin as a thread, with a face that revealed the inner man. He half-smiled shrewdly with perfect false teeth. His eyes, black as a raven’s, missed nothing. They quickly read Leary’s eyeglasses, loosened necktie, attaché case and dusty shoes. He was a man who was used to seeing everything, commenting on everything: a truth-teller who did not prize silence.

  Unpleasantly warm air swirled out of the apartment into the hallway, and with it came ancient established odors—liniments, salves, old musty bedclothes, and the ghost of cooking odors: boiled fish, boiled chicken, beet soup, chicken soup, vegetable soup and tea: the mixed and blended odors of an overheated apartment that’s sealed off from fresh winter air, waiting for spring and warmth.

  “It’s a fine day outside,” Leary hinted. “Very mild.”

  “It’s cold out,” declared the old man emphatically.

  Leary’s eye searched the small living room for another man. The furniture was very old, done in a bad, long-forgotten style.

  “Take off your coat. He’ll be here in a minute.” The old man stepped into the kitchen, little bigger than a closet, and began to open and shut wooden drawers. “Well,” he said aloud to himself. “We’ll see.”

  The bell rang and the old man pushed a button on the wall. “Here comes Hopalong Cassidy.”

  A man stepped through the apartment door a few minutes later and strode into the living room, scowling, intense, peering aggressively at Leary; a large man, overweight, almost hulking, with black hair and a dense blue muzzle in spite of his close shave.

  He pitched his topcoat onto the couch and said without preamble: “This is going to be a zero conversation—”

  The old man said: “Jay, maybe we should start with one of those happy stories from the old country. A funny, happy story, right out of our Yiddish literature which young American Jews can’t read.”

  The young man unhappily strode up and down in the living room, rubbing his hands like a man mentally preparing a speech. “Later. Later,” he said.

  “Maybe now is a good time,” said the old man. Leary sensed a strain between the two men. It was as though he’d intruded into an old, continuing argument; the story the old man wanted to tell was calculated to annoy the younger man while making some subtle point. “I’ll tell you both a nice Yiddish story from the old country. In 1903, the Russians held a national sport. They called it “pogrom,” and any number could play and everyone had fun. Guaranteed fun. My father was there—your great-grandfather, Jay. And I was there …”

  Jay Simmonds put his hands to his head and paced up and down. “I’ve heard this so many times. Not now …”

  “Anyway,” said the old man, ignoring him. He spoke in a singsong voice, as though weary of the tale himself, a necessary ritual chant to commence the proceedings. “A Russian pogromchik—a Cossack—understand, Mr. Leary, a man my father had never seen before in his whole life, a man who’d never seen him before, came riding into our shtetl right down the main street—the only street!—with these other Cossacks on horses. And he saw my father and me standing, too surprised to hide as we should have. And this Cossack—I remember his face so clearly: young with pink healthy cheeks and practically no beard. A boy! And he raised his saber and swung backhand, like this, and he hit my father like this, right across the face.

  “Incredible? Yes, incredible. My father’s face was split from here to here by that cavalry saber. He wore the scar to the grave, right over there in Brooklyn—in Brownsville. Imagine a man buried right here in New York City—imagine a saber scar on the face of a man buried in Brooklyn. A saber scar. And when I was still a young man here in Brooklyn, every day I looked at that scar. It stayed red for many, many years. And every day I looked and remembered. And there you have a nice Yiddisher story, from your old schnorrer grandfather. That’ll help you in your big discussion about Boris. And thanks for telling me about him.” The old man looked at Leary. “If I want to find out what’s going on with my family and friends, I have to read about it in the newspapers. So, I’m reading all the good news that’s happening in this world—muggings and rapes and wars and hijacking and disease and poverty—and there it was. Boris Kotlikoff has become big and famous in the kidnap business. He got a leading part. Congratulations. It’s 1903 all over again, and the Cossacks are playing pogrom again.”

  Jay Simmonds watched Leary’s face for a reaction, then shook his head. “You talk just like all the other old men from Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville. Old schtummies talking about the old country. Jesus. The old country. You never got anything but starvation and your asses kicked, and here you all are with your bellies full for the first time in centuries, belching seltzer and Nova Scotia salmon, and what do you talk about—how the Jew has prospered in America? No, you talk about the old country: how you stood there in that crummy, muddy village and let some peasant kid, filled with vodka, smack your father right in the face with a saber without raising a finger. Why? Because it’s a sin to shed blood. Not Jewish blood. Russian blood. It’s a sin to shed Russian blood. Jesus, how the Russians must have agreed with that.”

  “I see by the papers,” said his grandfather, “that the JDL is going to save us all. Tonight, with a big rally—if it doesn’t rain.” He snorted as he filled the tea kettle. “The JDL. The muscle and the threats and the cards with words on long sticks and the parading up and down. ‘Never Again.’ You think the JDL will take care of things. Ha! and a ha-ha to boot! It takes more than signs with words! Listen. In 1939—or 1938, I forget—my brother Morris, God rest his soul, and me—didn’t we go around to raise money? Hitler was selling Jews in Europe. Like an auction. Anybody could buy a Jew—a doctor. Yes, sir. We got doctors. Any kind of Jew you want. Jews up on the block for ransom. American Jews today like to point out how much money they kicked in to help the Jews in Europe. You know what?—it was a pittance, a drop. You know why? American Jews were ashamed. Ashamed! Of being Jews. Ashamed of those funny foreigners with the beards. With the accents. It was the old schtummies in Brownsville who put up. But the modern Jews—in 1938 there was a whole nation filled with secret Jews. No temples. No religion. No shul. Prayers forgotten. Yiddish forgotten. Lost ritual. The Covenant broken. Scrolls, tradition, Sabbath-keeping—all dead or dying. Identity dead. Most Jews didn’t know the difference between the Talmud and the Torah. The old Jews didn’t forget, but the children—You couldn’t find a dozen phylacteries among all the young Jews of Brooklyn—all the second- and third-generation Jews.”

  Jay sighed at his grandfather. “Ah! If it was left to the old kvetches, you’d all still be starving in some stinking hut in Pinskyminskydinsky hicktown in Russia saying ‘Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in Jerusalem,’ and letting a bunch of slope-headed Russian goons muscle you.”

  “Sit down, Jay. Sit, sit.” The grandfather stood over him. “Talk until your tongue turns black, but you lost what we had in the shtetl. Today it’s all—what’s the word—relevance! It’s all social gatherings and community projects, but the old religion is dead. The Covenant is broken. The Jew is lost. Lost!” His grandfather strode around him, stiff, straight-backed, aggressive, head up angrily. “So, so, so.” He stepped toward the kitchen. “We’ll have a nice glass of tea. I won’t fight with you. And maybe we’ll have a nice visit, and this gentleman will tell me why he’s here.”

  Jay Simmonds followed his grandfather into the kitchen. The strict, kosher kitchen of a skinny old man with
thick hair, much of it still black. He glanced at his grandson and reached down a large china teapot. “Another story?” He scalded the pot and dumped the water, then filled the pot to the brim with hot water. “How about a story—about all the Jews in Brownsville who had suitcases filled with money in their cellars. Half of all the money in the world was in the tenements of Brownsville. Everybody knew that. Why, even one of the Rothschilds secretly lived there under an alias. When the time comes, the Jews are going to take over.”

  The old man went to a closet and took out a heavy winter overcoat. He buttoned it with slow, old hands. “Listen, we’re not through. You can talk all you want about the old days, but the Jew was a lot better off. He was alive. Ha? Does that make you laugh?” He put on a fur-lined leather cap with two flaps that fastened under his chin, then reached down a pair of leather gloves. “The Jew was in the vestibule of heaven in his shtetl, and he had his Covenant and his weekly taste of heaven. He had a spiritual life you can’t even begin to imagine. He was a happy man—and how many American Jews can say that?—forty pounds overweight and soft in the gut, paying alimony to their complaining fat wives. The Jew had it and he lost it. He was alive and now he’s dead—like all the goyim.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I’ll be right back.” The old man left the apartment.

  “The old days, the old ways, the Jewish days, the bad days,” murmured Jay Simmonds. “Stupid. Millions of them just like him—old Jews like lumps, all right, sitting in front of the eyes of the Czar, who hated them. Hated them. Screw the old country. Up your randypole ass with the old country.”

  “Has all this got something to do with Boris Kotlikoff?”

  Simmonds raised his head from his fists. “Kotlikoff. Yes, everything. What did my grandfather tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Well, as you heard, my grandfather came from a village in Russia. He was a friend of Boris Kotlikoff’s grandfather. He emigrated. Boris’s grandfather stayed.”

  “They lived in the same village?”

  “They were distant cousins. So one night my grandfather was reading the paper here and sees that Boris Kotlikoff is in America. So he picks up the phone and calls him and tells him that he’s an old friend of Boris’s grandfather. Boris was over here like a shot. They’d sit in there, in the kitchen, and drink tea. And my grandfather would talk. And talk. And talk. He has a million stories. He knew everyone and he never forgot anything in his whole life. He can tell you who was married to whom, wedding dates, burial dates, the names of all the children and all the events in the village from the day he was born. And Boris sat there in the kitchen like a little kid, listening to everything. He wrote a whole book of poetry about it. I used to kid him about it—called it ‘The Spoon River Anthology of Yiddishland.’ He said, one night, ‘I feel like a man who’s recovered his long-lost patrimony.’ We used to argue about it—the three of us. I told them it’s dead and buried. They should forget the old villages and the poverty and pogroms. The Jew has some big problems right now today in New York. The Jew in America is one screwed-up guy, Leary. And he doesn’t even begin to know who he is.”

  “That’s a contagious disease everyone has.”

  “Yeah, well, okay. I only know about the Jew. My grandfather says over and over like a broken record that the Jew won’t get his identity back until he takes up his religion again. Orthodox religion. But we can’t. I mean two sets of dishes and scrub up the place every Friday and—come on! Listen, Leary, the American Jew—the Jewish American—is no more related to the old Jew in his shtetl than that cat is. He’s just another American hustler turning a buck, and he has no more idea of what he’s doing, where he’s going or why than the next guy. But I’ll tell you something, Leary. He knows where he’s not going—he’s not going back to that filthy frozen starving goddam village in Russia. Ah—who cares? We’re all lost. My grandfather’s a throwback. An anachronism. We can’t go back.”

  “It seems he’s saying you have to go back to that way of thinking.”

  “Ah …”

  “He’s not alone. Boris Kotlikoff says it. Carl Jung said it; so did Adler. So do Ericson and Coles and everyone else who knows the human mind. Hillel.”

  “Yeah, I know. Hillel. Boris was big on Hillel.”

  “Well, they can’t all be wrong. They say man has to change his way of thinking—especially the Americans—because we’re on the long slide to extinction and we haven’t got much time. We all have to think like the old Jew. Even the Jews have to become Jewish again.”

  “Forget it, Leary. The monkey’s paw will get us all in the end. You know about the monkey’s paw? No? It’s so simple. Fiendish. So instructive. You know how they catch monkeys in Africa? Easy. They drill a hole in a coconut just big enough for a monkey’s paw and they chain the coconut to a tree. The monkey comes down and puts his hand in the coconut because there’s food in there. But when he closes his paw around the food, guess what? Yep. Fist is too big. Can’t get the fist out. So there the monkey sits. Can’t get his fist back, and he’s too damned greedy to let the food go and open his hand. So the hunter comes along and catches the monkey. And that’s the way it is. Attached to every human arm is a monkey’s paw. Okay?”

  “So which way are you betting?” asked Leary.

  “I go with the odds,” said Jay Simmonds. “Man’ll never make it. I bet on the monkey’s paw.”

  “If you’re right, who’s going to be around to pay off your bet?”

  “Yeah. Who?”

  The key sounded in the doorlock, and the old man reentered his apartment with a small brown bag. He withdrew a small box of sugar and set it on the kitchen table, then began the ceremony of removing his winter garments.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, as though there’d been no interruption in their conversation, “with the price of sugar, it’s cheaper to stir the money in the tea and drink that. Now. We’ll have a nice cup of tea. If our visit isn’t going one hundred percent, Jay, at least we can have a nice cup of tea and then—ah, then, the three of us can get my millions out of the closet and we can spend the afternoon counting it.” He opened the kitchen cabinet and began to assemble some teacups.

  “The bank records show that Boris Kotlikoff turned over to you one hundred thousand dollars over a period of a few months. Can you tell me about that?”

  Jay Simmonds said: “No. It was a private matter. It’s no. That’s the answer. No.”

  “That’s a lot of money, Mr. Simmonds.”

  “That depends on how you look at it.”

  “You know,” said the grandfather, carrying the teapot into the living room, “I was buying that sugar and that name Gelb crossed my mind—you know, the policeman in the train station? I knew him in the Brownsville days. He was a wise kid, a corner boy, tough. He used to fight semipro at the old Seaman’s Center. He had a good right hand but he was a bad Jew. He didn’t want to hear from Sunday about being a Jew—none of them wanted to hear about it. But, funny to relate, he’s the son of Meyer Gelb, the plumber in Brooklyn who’s from the same village. I bet you Gelb doesn’t know it, but he’s a distant cousin of Boris Kotlikoff. Funny world, isn’t it?”

  Jay Simmonds began to chuckle. Then he raised his head and laughed louder, coarsely. “Everyone is a distant cousin to everyone else on earth, and all of us come from the same shtetl in Russia. All the world is secretly Jewish.”

  His grandfather put down the teapot on a trivet on the coffee table. “That would be a very sensible arrangement.” He looked at his grandson, then softly gripped his grandson’s fleshy jaw. Lightly, he held the face in his fingertips, like a man holding a huge and priceless egg. He slapped the face lightly with his fingertips. “Jay. I have bad news for you. If all the world isn’t Jewish, you are. You’re a Jew. A Jew with a history, and the world won’t let you forget it. God won’t let you forget it—you got a contract with Him. You’re a Jew, and you might as well enjoy all you can for being a Jew because, Jay, you’re going
to bleed for it. We always have.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” said Jay Simmonds. He averted his face.

  Leary walked out of the apartment building directly to an outside phone booth. From it, he could watch the apartment doorway.

  There was a quarrel going on—a continuing and sharp disagreement between the old man and his grandson, in which the old man chose to speak in oblique terms, in parallels that only his grandson understood. At the center of the quarrel but never mentioned was Boris Kotlikoff, and in the background like a doleful presence was a brooding sense of conspiracy. They shared a secret: they knew why Kotlikoff had been kidnapped. The secretness now pervaded the street. Leary looked up at the high buildings and felt that from many windows conspirators were slyly peering down, aware of the secret, mute but attentive participants in the quarrel, watching him, waiting for him to leave. He gazed around the street. Was Geller’s gang watching the watchers?

  Leary had his bluff called by Jay Simmonds. The man flatly refused to tell him about the money. Leary couldn’t do a thing; he had no authority; his tiger had no teeth. He had to find another way to trace that one hundred thousand dollars.

  The shadows of clouds cruised along the sunny streets, slowly filling the sky. Powell had hoped for rain to bar the protest meetings. In front of the booth was a plane tree with its seed balls pendent since last autumn. Taught by Kotlikoff’s journals, Leary was aware of the buds on the trees. There was a faint haze of green pointillism formed from the barely seen buds. He realized he was sorry that Kotlikoff had missed seeing it. It gave him a feeling of regret like a vague hunger.

  Jay Simmonds erupted through the apartment doorway and strode up the street, gripping his topcoat and rhythmically swinging it like a strangled bird, a man talking angrily to himself. He walked back to the Lexington Avenue subway. Kotlikoff was right: Simmonds walked sidewise with his right shoulder thrust forward—an apologetic aggressiveness.